A correspondent furnishes the _Times_ with the following interesting historical notices of this celebrated monument: "Travellers who visit Alexandria cannot fail to observe, on the south side of the great harbor, now called the New Port, a beautiful obelisk of red Thebaic granite, or Syenite, covered with hieroglyphics, standing erect where was once the Cæsarium, or Temple of Cæsar, while near it another similar monument lies prostrate, and partly covered by the sand. To these relics of a remote antiquity the Arabs give the name of Mesellet Faráun, or _Pharaoh's Packing Needle_, a term which is, indeed, applied by them to all obelisks. The traditions of the later periods of the Roman Empire, and of a subsequent time, seem to have attributed many objects at Alexandria to Cleopatra, and the obelisks in question are accordingly best known to Europeans as _Cleopatra's Needles_, a trivial designation, possessing as little historical value as that of "Queen Elizabeth's Pocket Pistol," which is given to the great gun at Dover. The classical term _obelisk_ is, in its origin, not less trivial, if it be true that it is derived from the Latin _obeliscus_, a diminutive of the Greek word [Greek: obelos], which means, literally, a spit, as indicative of the peculiar form of this species of monument. "As far as the true history of these obelisks is concerned, which is principally to be deduced from the monarchs' names sculptured on them, they appear to have been originally cut at the granite quarries of Syene, at the first cataract in Upper Egypt, 750 miles from their present site, by Thothmosis III. This monarch was one of the most celebrated rulers of that remarkable country. We find remains of him in Nubia, at Samneh, at Premmis, and at Amada, proving that his sway extended even beyond the third cataract. He added also largely to the great temple of Karnak; and on the sculptures in one of its rooms he is represented as presenting offerings to his ancestors or predecessors of eight several dynasties, namely: the kings of Thebes, of Abydos, of Memphis, of Ethiopia, and of four other divisions of Egypt. In one of the tombs near Thebes is a painting of a grand procession of men of the several nations bordering on the Nile, who are bringing their costly gifts in token of homage to this king. Under Thothmosis III., who held Upper and Lower Egypt and Ethiopia, the kingdom of Thebes had reached its full size. Several later kings may have been more wealthy, and more powerful, and their conquests may have extended further, but those conquests were only temporary; and the glories of those later kings never threw the reign of Thothmosis III. into the shade.